Media & Book Reviews page
Japan, the Universe & Everything.
If your curiousity about things Japanese extends further than watching
anime, you may be interested in what really lies behind the images of Japanese
life depicted in anime and manga. Some of it, obviously, is complete fantasy
- there are no green-haired girls from outer space - while other elements
are fairly accurate - the typical school buildings do resemble the multi-story
flat-roofed structures shown in various anime. But there are other elements
that anyone not very familiar with Japan could only guess at.
How well do you think you will do with this 'True
or False' quiz?
1. Are there shadowy right-wing groups linked to organised crime and
extortion rackets whose influences extend right up into the Government?
(Mai the Psychic Girl, Legend of the 4 Kings). T or F?
2. Do motorcycle gangs like those depicted in AKIRA really exist?
3. Do girl gangs like those depicted in KIMAGURE ORANGE ROAD, HANAMO
ASUZA GOMI, THIS IS GREENWOOD etc really exist?
4. Do virtual idols like 'Sharon Apple' (MACROSS PLUS) already exist?
5. The kind of console gaming and net-hacking scene depicted in MEGAZONE
23 is lifted straight from contemporary Tokyo. T or F?
6. Are Japanese boys as shy and hopeless with girls as Kyousuke (ORANGE
ROAD) Tenchi (TENCHIMUYO) or Youta (VIDEO GIRL AI)?
7. Are Japanese girls are as bold and pushy as the girls in the above-mentioned
series?
8. Do tranvestites like those appearing briefly in 3x3 EYES really
exist?
9. Teachers have got away with killing pupils in over-zealous disciplinary
procedures (KEKKO KAMEN). T or F?
10. Japanese youngsters have a lot of spare time to engage in various
activities, if not as adventurous as those of Ataru Moroboshi (URUSEI YATSURA).
T or F?
Answers are at the foot of the page, and while you are thinking it
over, here are some reviews of some books etc which should expand your
perceptions of Japanese life.
SPEED TRIBES - Karl Taro Greenfield.
If you are interested in what lies behind some of the images of delinquent
behaviour shown in anime, you must read SPEED TRIBES, a collection of articles
by a Japanese/American journalist. The Speed Tribes" are motorcycle gangs
but the author uses the name as a label for other youth groups estranged
from the mainstream of Japanese culture. The chapters, which originally
appeared as articles in various magazines, are each dramatised documentaries
about the life of different persons; a bosozoku motorcycle gang member,
an American hostess, a disco girl, a motorcycle thief, porn movie people,
drug dealer, yakuza member, member of right-wing semi-criminal movement.The
chapter headings are weird enough to merit a listing (my explanation in
brackets).
1 Izumi: the money drinkers (Gambling rackets)
2 Tats: the Speed tribes (Bikers)
3: Dai: the motorcycle thief
4: Choco Bon-Bob &Emi: the perfect Tuna (Porn)
5: Keiko: the Early Breakfast Club. (Disco girl)
6 Hiro & Yoshihara: the Best and the Brightest. (Todai students)
7 Kazu & Hiroko: the Map Maker (Drug deals)
8: Tusk: Twilight of the Gods (Rock band)
9 Ozaki: the True Believer (Right wing)
10 Jackie: the Hostess
11 Moto: Home-Stay (Punk)
12 Snix : the Otaku. (Computer hacker)
All this makes worrying reading for nervous solo travellers!
But even if you came across some of these people, you probably wouldn't
know. And some vocabulary you probably won't learn at your evening class:
bosozoku=motorcycle gangsters (lit."speed tribes")
uyoku = fanatic ultra rightist parties (crime linked)
chimpira= gangsters' errand boys (lit. "little pricks")
sarakin= loan shark
dorobo=thief
Bad Girls.
Bad girls are rare in Japan! Sure, there are girls who hang around
with bike gangs, or go to discos to get laid, but there is little evidence
of the violent girl gangs who appear in HERE IS GREENWOOD, KIMAGURE ORANGE
ROAD, HANAMO ASUKA GOMI and sundry other anime. Madoka and Hikaru were
a tad badder in the original ORANGE ROAD manga, where they smoke cigarettes,
wear leather jackets, drink, and threaten Kasuga's sister Kurumi; than
they are in the anime. Asuka in HANAMO ASUKA GOMI is the definitive bad
girl, so bold and fearless that she frightens her parents.
In fact, Japanese girls are notably less streetwise than their Western
sisters and are often so shy that they freeze in panic if a gaijin tries
to speak to them. Japanese society is still so conventional that it seems
all a schoolgirl has to do to get a bad reputation is to go to discos,
drink alcohol, or be seen in the entertainment district. Schoolgirls whose
hair is not glossy black have to bring a note from their parents confirming
that the hair colour is natural and NOT (heinous offence!) dyed. (The use
of a rainbow of hair colours in anime may be pure coincidence.) Perhaps
this is why Japanese boys find the idea of 'bad girls' so exciting.
AFTER SCHOOL KEYNOTES - Amy Yamada (Kodansha English Library,
182pp, Y520.)
If you want to know the real-life angle on the adolescent love affairs
shown in innumerable anime and manga, then you need to read Amy Yamada's
"After School Keynotes". Is school romance all as innocent as anime often
makes it seem?
Amy Yamada's writing is very popular with younger Japanese women and
also well regarded in literary circles. In this small book, she explores
the love lives of Japanese girls with extraordinary sensitivity, perception
and insight. The book, tracing the sexual awakening of a high school girl,
consists of a number of linked tales. The semi-autobiographical narrator
observes the love trials of other young women and tries to be a detached
observer but is gradually drawn in. The writing, often quite sensual, depicts
ordinary scenes with such intensity that the reader might almost be there.
The preoccupation of Japanese girls with love and romance, their frank
interest in sex, and the envious ostracism that greets a girl who dares
lose her virginity, comes over very strongly.
Note that this book is unavailable in the UK except in specialist stores
like the Japan Centre. This edition, with kanji-sprinkled dustjacket, was
evidently translated and published for Japanese who like to read their
own literature in English!
KITCHEN - Banana Yoshimoto (Faber &
Faber, 150pp, £5.99)
KITCHEN contains two ostensibly unconnected stories, 'Kitchen' and
'Moonlight Shadow'. The tales deal with mothers, trans-sexuality, bereavement,
kitchens, love, tragedy, as contemplated or experienced by a pair of free-spirited
young women in contemporary Japan.
In the first story, Mikage, who has lost her parents and then her grandmother,
is invited to live with a friend and his mother. In the second, the heroine
mourns her boyfriend who has been killed with another girl in a road accident.
In this story, a youth goes to school wearing his dead sister's school
uniform, an action which evokes surprise, curiousity and admiration more
than censure.
Yoshimoto is an excellent writer, very popular with young Japanese
women, some of whom have read few novels by anyone else. Her novels have
a strange, offbeat quality that sometimes is reminiscent of *shojo* anime.
N.P. - Banana Yoshimoto (Faber & Faber, 194pp, £5.99)
This is the second book by Yoshimoto, and is a story of passion, friendship
and incestuous relationships. The 'N.P.' is the title of a fictional last
collection of short stories written in English by an expatriate Japanese.
It seems fated never to see print in Japan, as each time a new translator
takes up the task, death or suicide gets in the way.
The novel is the story of four young people each involved with the
writer or his work who attempt to overcome their feelings of pain and loss.
This novel is a little harder to get into than "KITCHEN" but is an
intensely written tale of youthful desires and obsessions.
TOKYO SHOCK BOYS
Warning - not for the easily offended! I first heard about the Tokyo Shock Boys from a flyer I picked
up from an Edinburgh street during the yearly Festival. It showed four
fierce-looking young Japanese in sunglasses posed variously with a fan
and curved sword and footed by a series of quotes such as 'The Shoguns
of Samurai Schlock', 'Horribly Hilarious' 'Truly mind-blowing bad taste'
'I found myself reduced to helpless, if shameful, laughter'
This I had to see, as I consider myself a conoisseur of popular Japanese
culture (well I try, I try).
The following night I arrived at the Palladium, one of those imposing
but grimy buildings in a side street of Edinburgh's 19th cent. New Town
that looked like a classical temple from the outside, and inside looked
like a cross between a church (complete with cramped wooden pews) and a
theatre, and maybe had served as all these when not doubling as an Auld
Reekie slum. Outside a crowd waited to get in, all Westerners except for
two nervous looking Japanese girls.
After a lengthy and under-explained delay, the audience was let in,
and eventually the show got under way, with a young Japanese producing
a blast of club mix sound from a portable console and a wall of amps and
speakers.
The Shock Boys come on stage dressed in a mix of Western and stage
Japanese garb and launch into their series of startling and painful stunts.
The first trick is cutting with a very sharp-looking sword a watermelon
placed on the stomach of the fattest Shock Boy. There follows eating dry
ice, stopping the blades of revolving electric fans (ouch), snapping a
prickly cactus with the buttocks, letting off fireworks stuck into various
bodily orifices. Then there is the drinking of washing up liquid.
One of the Shock Boys is placed in a glass booth which contains fireworks.
When it is sealed, the fireworks are lit and sprinkle a rain of sparks
all over him.
A more startling point of the show is when one of the Boys (the tall
bald one) dangles a live scorpion on his bald head and inside his mouth.
Then there is the Vacuum Bag. An incautious volunteer from the audience,
with more years than commonsense allows herself to be zipped inside a stout
plastic bag alongside one of the Boys (Sango). The bag is then connected
to an industrial vacuum cleaner which sucks out all the air and shrink-wrapped
the transparent bag around the pair of them.
Then there is the Rabbit. Nambu carries a white and black rabbit on
stage. In view of what has gone before, one fears for the rabbit's life!
However, Nambu merely sucks at the rabbit's behind and then spits out some
brown pellets. YUKK!
During most of these proceedings the two Japanese girls have their hands crammed over their faces in classic poses of horror and embarrassment.
Then there are the Testicles. Nambu ties a rope around his testicles
and fastens the other end to a toilet plunger glued to Gyuzo's head. They
have a tug of war contest. Nambu wins, and flips up his loincloth to show
the audience that it isn't a scam. Later another foolhardy volunteer comes
on stage and sits on a wheeled office chair. Nambu pulls her around the
stage by the rope tied to his testicles. The audience applaud.
One of the Boys puts on a huge nappy which he fills up with kerosine.
Later he stuffs his nappy (not the same one, hopefully) with fireworks
and lights them. They keep the stunts happening, accompanied by loud Japanese
club mix music, for about 70 minutes.
SHOCK BOYS PRESS CUTTINGS:
"Outrageous, hilarious, compelling, intellectually worthless - the
best night out this side of Tokyo!"
"By the end of the show it's unclear whether the Tokyo Shock Boys deserve
our applause, a padded cell, or a speedy deportation order... absolutely
indefensible; I enjoyed it enormously."
"Tacky, tasteless, juvenile, depraved... and hilarious!"
"Should be banned... stupid, repulsive and it's nae funny.. but they've
got very strong testicles."
"A Shock Boys performance, once seen, is never forgotten, however hard
you try."
BACKGROUND:
The Tokyo Shock Boys (known in Japan as DENGEKI NETWORK) are one of
Japan's best known comedy exports. They came together six years ago after
individually working as actors and comedians on the Tokyo live comedy circuit.
Three of the Boys, Gyuzo, Sango and Danna, met while building sets for
a Paul McCartney concert, and they all met Danna while performing individually
on one of Japan's notorious midnight variety TV shows that had a segment
showcasing weird and gross acts ( the kind of TV show featured on Clive
James' roundup of bizarre foreign TV).
For more information, biographies, and pictures, visit the Shockboys' own homepage.
Geoff's comment : I'm not sure how much I enjoyed the Shockboys or if they were any good but it was certainly an experience...
Book Review
JAPAN IN WAR AND PEACE by JOHN DOWER. (Harper Collins, 1995,368pp,
£18, ISBN 0 00 255602-2) -Essays on history, race and culture.
This recent book contains ten essays on recent Japanese history, several
of which shatter popular myths or disclose little-known and startling facts.
The book provides a historical account rather more incisive than most of
the shoal of popular books about Japan.
The first chapter, perhaps of greatest interest to those interested
in Japan's commercial success, analyses its roots in the militarism and
zaibatsu of the 1930's, and the rather communistic central direction
of the early Occupation and reconstruction period, paving the way for the
advances made during the Korean war.
The second chapter discusses the war movies made in Japan from the
1930's up to 1945. These were often of considerable artistic merit, and
in contrast to the jingoism and racism of American movies of the period,
the Japanese war movies rarely depicted an enemy, preferring to tell the
story of a typical hero, and in showing the horrors of war were, on occasion,
(like Takakau Heitei's Fighting Soldiers) anti-war to the point
of being suppressed by the regime whose Chinese war they were supposed
to be promoting. One movie had mock sea battles so realistic that Occupation
authorities spent some time searching for the original battle footage.Today,
these films are almost unknown, and exist only in rarely sceened archives.
The third chapter describes the atomic bomb research carried out by
the Japanese during the war period. Many will be surprised to learn that
the Japanese had an atomic bomb programme at all. Although no particular
effort was made to keep this secret, writings on the subject after the
war were in Japanese. In fact it seems to have been a low-key affair, and
those involved believed (no doubt correctly) that without adequate reserves
of uranium ore, and the industrial muscle to build huge separation plants,
Japan had no hope of producing a usable weapon before the end of the war.
However, when the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at least some Japanese
knew exactly what had hit them.
The fourth chapter neatly overturns the popular image of the Japanese
people as being totally and fanatically behind the Emperor and the war
effort up to the end of the war. In fact, disaffection among the common
people was widespread and Marxist unrest was feared by the authorities.
Dower produces impressive statistics, compiled by the secret police, of
the numbers of people arrested for writing violently anti-government slogans
of the "Kill the Emperor" variety, or engaging in vocal criticism of the
regime. Statistics of the numbers of strikes and labour disputes occurring
in the war period are also given. The fifth and sixth chapters cover the
post-war Occupation period. The most interesting observation of this period
is that up to 1948, Japan was being put through a period of democratization,
demilitarisation, and the weeding out of those associated with the war
regime, and the imposition of an anti-war constitution, and that after
1948, at the behest of the Americans, this went into reverse gear, with
conservatism, anti-Communism and militarism high on the agenda, and with
many left-wingers being fired to be replaced by previously purged militarists.
To the chagrin of the Americans, the otherwise pliant Japanese refused
to revise their anti-war constitution, which had huge popular support (as
only those who have read chapter 4 of this book can appreciate) and declined
to raise a new, large Japanese army.
The Korean War started in 1950, and is widely believed to be a key
factor in Japan's postwar ecomomic boom.
Chapter 7 is entitled "Japanese Artists and the Atomic Bomb" and may
be of more interest to manga fans than the economic and polictical chapters,
for it mentions "Barefoot Gen" The art itself is deeply moving,
and the political dimension in the context of re-militarization is also
discussed.
Chapter 8 discusses the racism in the American and Japanese cultures,
and Chapter 9 shows it as expressed in American cartoons. During the war
the Japanese were frequently depicted as subhuman, or as menacing supermen.
Chapter 10, in similar vein, discusses fear and prejudice in US-Japanese
relations, as expressed in such items as the recent anti-Japanese movie
"Rising Sun." The wartime racist sentiments still appear today,
in the persistence of depictions of the Japanese as puny, adolescent, or
as supermen (sometimes simultaneously).
Chapter 11 consists of reflections on the death of the Showa Emperor,
Hirohito, in 1988. Hirohito's image underwent several changes during his
long reign, from remote uniformed figure, seen seated on horseback, to
warlord, to ageing, shy, vulnerable civilian.
This book is essential reading for those with an interest in Japanese
culture and history.
(Geoff C.)
Book Review
THE LIFE OF AN AMOROUS MAN by Ihara Saikaku(Charles E Tuttle
Company, 240pp, Y1380/£8.50, ISBN 0-8048-1069-9)
The Life of an Amorous Man, first published in 1682, depicts the pursuits
and follies of one of the more glorious ages of old Japan; the dawn of
the Genroku period, when wealthy commoners, rising in importance above
the traditional warrior caste, indulged in the free and easy life of Japan's
celebrated pleasure houses. The hero of this fascinating novel is a composite
of the many daijin (men of wealth) who spent their time in these
flourishing establishments. The hero, Yonosuke, is followed from precocious
childhood to the close of his amatory career. Along the way, Saikaku chronicles
the erotic escapades of his hero and provides vivid character sketches
of the women (and sometimes the men) with whom Yonosuke dallied.
Saikaku Ihara (1641-93), novelist and poet, is credited with
founding the genre called ukiyo-zoshi (books of the floating world),
a type of popular fiction written between the 1680's and the 1770's. Once
downgraded as vulgar, today Saikaku is acclaimed a great realist, largely
because of his minute and accurate delineation of characters, customs and
events of his day. (blurb)
A small part of this novel, the tale of the tailor Juzo and the courtesan
Komurasaki, was animated as THE SENSUALIST (dir. Yuko Abe), (Western Connection),
55 mins, cert 18, £14.99, reviewed
elsewhere on this website.
Book Review
The Oxford book of Japanese Short Stories edited by Theoore W. Goosen, pub Oxford University Press, £11.99, ISBN 0-19-283304-9
This is a substantial collection of over thirty stories, some of them classics, spanning the whole of Japan's modern era from the 1860's to the present day. Most Japan buffs should find at least one or two stories which are familiar by reputation, or through some screen adaptation. The volume has an appendix indicating screen adaptations of stories in the collection, or of novels by the same authors. Anime fans may know "A Wandering Life (Wandering Days)" in the Central Park Media Animated Classics of Japanese Literature series, and based on Hayashi Fumiko's The accordion and the fish town. Miyazawa Kenji wrote the novella Night on the Galactic Railroad, adapted as an anime.
Book Review
Japan as Anything But Number One by Jon Woronoff (Macmillan, 1990, ISBN 0-333-54568-0)
Woronoff sets out to puncture the myth of an incredible and wonderful Japan as put out by a large number of Japan enthusiasts. This myth may have had some of the hot air let out of it by the prolonged economic stagnation since Woronoff's book was written but the book still makes salutory reading.
He starts by looking at the Japan-apologists, the academics who write flattering books about Japan, knowing that this will get them nice jobs and perks, and the American diplomats who favour Japanese interests in a way that would probably have got them arrested for treason in a less sympathetic age. He points out that some of the more enthusiastic stuff written about Japan has almost no contact with reality. For instance, "Lifetime Employment", which only ever existed in the core companies of large kaisha, and then up to the age of 55 or 60, leaving a gap before the pensionable age. And this was before the recent economic downturn. Anyone who worked for a subsidiary, or a backstreet component supplier, never had much job security, even if they were not a temporary worker. So only a minority (20%?) of employees ever had anything like "lifetime employment".
He goes on to take various Japanese sectors in turn and rate them for performance. He awards Superior Grades to Japanese management, Japanese companies and industrial policy. Satisfactory Grades are awarded to Economic Progress, Education, and control of Crime. Unsatisfactory Grades are awarded to Politics, Society, and Internationalization. Inferior Grades are awarded for Quality of Life, Amenities, and Welfare.
Key points are that much of the success of Japanese industry must be due to the much longer work hours extracted from Japanese workers over a working year, compared with the West. Woronoff also considers that Japanese crime control is not as wonderful as generally claimed, and that if one looked at under-reporting, and the prosperity of the yakuza, and the prevalence of protection rackets and intimidation, a much less rosy picture would emerge. He also points out that the Japanese quality of life is generally awful.
My readers may well be in indignant denial at this point, and suspecting that Woronoff is just a Japan-basher whose views can be ignored. I don't think so. Since his book was written, I have seen no news from Japan indicating that any of the things he criticizes have got any better. Japanese politics are still the same, the economy has serious problems, the concentration of everything in Tokyo continues, and so on. There are also reports of increasing violence and bullying among the young.
I have visited Japan, for a total of four weeks, and while this was insufficient for a proper study, I did see for myself that a lot of the housing was cramped and of a poor standard, and that the hillsides around Nikko were liberally covered with concrete dams across almost every gully. One gully had an intact set of old dams, and a new set as well! What were they for? Woronoff describes the construction industry having its pockets lined by just this sort of make-work project, paid for by the taxpayers, of course. And I saw people living rough in the subways of Tokyo. As for urban planning, there obviously isn't any.
You should read this book. It makes a valuable corrective.
Book Review
THE COMING COLLAPSE by BRIAN READING (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1992, 310pp, £18.99, ISBN 0-297-81020-0)
This is another book with an arresting title, promising to make a highly critical examination of Japanese affairs. Brian Reading is a well-known British economist who has held various influential positions in the public service, and also wrote and broadcast extensively.
Much of the book consists of highly technical analysis of Japanese economic affairs. He discusses the financial problems caused by Japan's excess of savings (a concept that only economists will fully understand) and in the process gives an insight into why the Japanese, a sovereign country, have to put up with the Americans and others periodically paying a visit and telling the Japanese how to run their economy.
He describes in highly critical terms the Japanese tax collection system ("A Nation of Tax Cheats"), the lack of public amenities resulting from low taxation and low public spending; the poorly funded welfare system, and the strange methods used for managing the budget.
He goes on to make a critical assessment of corporate finance, where companies exist in a maze of cross-holdings, with no visible means of support, where insider dealing and share ramping is rife, and of a public service riddled with graft, inefficiency and the paying back of political favours.
The farming sector comes in for criticism as being, unlike Japanese industry, hopelessly inefficient, and enmeshed with the Noyco agency, which acts as a wholesaler for farm produce, supplies goods to farmers, supplies farmers with financial services, and controls large numbers of LDP politicians. Noyco has allegedly been a bastion of conservatism, resisting change of any kind. Its hundreds of thousands of employees, almost as numerous as the full-time farmers themselves, are a powerful lobby group, with a vested interest in keeping Japanese farms small and inefficient.
Reading asserts that overall, Japanese workers are no more efficient than anywhere else, the highly efficient industrial sector being counterbalanced by inefficiency in farming and retail distribution.
He points to some well-known Japanese ills: the rabbit-hutch housing, the slow disintegration of the Japanese family, the flight from the countryside, and late marriage. Less obvious is the notion that, fifty years after the destitution following the end of the Second World War, almost all the capital wealth of Japan is again concentrated in the hands of one third of the population.
One startling claim he makes is that the settling of claims for motor accidents is mostly in the hands of the Yakuza. That may explain why, in the middle of a po-faced "Japanese Language and People" textbook and tape series, I stumbled on a strange dialog in which a motorist collides with another car and finds that he is being menaced by a gangster demanding money... That seems entirely typical of Reading's Japan, outwardly very law-abiding but underneath riddled with cheating, financial corruption and intimidation.
Reading delivers his most cutting criticism in the final section, "Harvest of Failure" which is about Japanese money politics of recent decades. He depicts a political system which is in theory democratic but in fact is built on cash and favours, with an electoral system that encourages mediocrity. The main activity of Diet members seems to be raking in large amounts of money in order to conduct their election campaigns, which consist of bribing anyone who might help them get elected, including the voters. The ballots, Reading claims, are anything but secret, with interested scrutineers watching the voter's every move, even in the voting booth. Various factions of the Liberal Democratic Party squabble among themselves and fix it for their leaders to take turns being Prime Minister.
Reading's predictions for the future are gloomy. He clearly believes that the Japanese political economy is deeply unstable. He makes it clear that powerful vested interests stand in the way of almost any sensible change. His main prescription seems to be a liberalisation of the economy on Western lines, to free the energies of the population, and including the abolition of the regulations that stifle a free market in development land and cause the notoriously inefficient use of land. Needless to say, such a change would be highly unwelcome to millions of Japanese small traders, whose lives would be overturned by such changes.
Reading suggests that a generation of younger bureaucrats is in favour of reform. However it is evident that any change will be very slow and gradual (which seems to have been the case since the book was written) or sudden, violent and revolutionary. The latter, of course, is what Reading is suggesting in his title.
Time will tell whether Reading is right. His message will doubtless annoy Japan-apologists, but has not yet been proved to be substantially wrong.
Book Review
NIP THE BUDS, SHOOT THE KIDS by Kenzaburo OE (Marion Boyars, 1958/1995, 190pp, £14.95, ISBN 0-7145-2997-4)
This is the debut novel by Japanese Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe, who was born in 1935. Oe was an introverted, studious boy who grew up in wartime Japan, in a remote rural district, and was greatly influenced by his wartime experiences. Oe's anger against the sheeplike conformity of his elders, and their participation in disastrous military adventures, and the craven post-occupation reversal of ideologies, is evident in his work.
In Nip The Buds, a group of juvenile delinquents from a reformatory is evacuated to the countryside to escape the bombing. Ill-fed and roughly treated, and unable to disappear into a countryside controlled by violent and callous peasants, they are rejected by the inhabitants of village after village. Eventually, they arrive at a village where there is a plague outbreak among the animals. The adults lock the boys in a hut and then flee to avoid the plague, leaving the boys in temporary command of the village. Hovever, they are unable to escape the blockaded village.
This is a powerful novel, strongly evoking primitive images of the Japanese countryside and delivering a not-so oblique critique of Japanese wartime society.
ANSWERS TO QUIZ.
1. True, most observers believe. Though they may not be able to order out
the armed forces, what these people can get away with is chilling
enough.
2. They do exist. The bosozoku (speed tribes) are part of a Japanese
underclass of dropouts, kids from broken homes and would-be yakuza.
Many, however, ride 50cc bikes with the silencers removed.
3. If there are any, I know nothing about them.
4. Almost true; Yui Haga- a virtual starlet - was manufactured to the
point where several girls did the signing at autograph sessions.
5. True.
6. True. They spend all their spare time attending cram school.
7. False. It's just a male fantasy.
8. They do, and are widely tolerated in that sort of nightlife or entertainment
situation.
9. True. Teachers have got away with stuff like killing kids by slamming
the school gates on them as they arrived late. No kinky stuff though.
10. False! See 6.